


heir apparent

by penhaligon



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhaligon/pseuds/penhaligon
Summary: The egg is no longer an egg, and Ezran had made a promise.





	heir apparent

Prince Ezran is three years old when he disappears from the castle one afternoon. The uproar that follows lasts for two hours, an increasingly frenetic search that sweeps outside into the town and forest and yields no results, until one of the cooks finds Ezran crawling out of the kitchen wall. Afterwards, King Harrow clutches his chest and says that he's getting too old for such scares, and Prince Callum tries to pretend that he wasn't crying, but Queen Sarai laughs a booming laugh, lifts her youngest high, and declares that her son has bested the finest of the kingdom that day.

Not long after that, a glow toad jokingly named Bait is given to Ezran by his father, who says that explorers need light so they don't get lost in the dark.

Ezran is six years old when Sarai comes home with a wound that doesn't heal. He disappears after goodbyes are said, after the last of life has slipped from the Queen, and this time, Callum knows where to look. The oldest prince of Katolis crawls through passageways behind stone walls until he finds the youngest, and they sit together for a long while, in darkness lit only by Bait's blue glow. Eventually, Harrow finds them too, squeezing through the narrow tunnels to gather his sons close.

The passageways and tunnels that run through the castle like the hollow bones of a bird are many things to Ezran as he grows - a challenge, a refuge from lessons, a way to win hide-and-seek against Callum and Soren and Claudia, an imaginative rendering of the magical lands of Xadia where bloodthirsty elves lurk behind every curve of stone. Their warmth and Bait-lit darkness are a balm for a lonely boy whose best friends are a glow toad and a brother, who is never able to figure out how to talk to children his own age in a way that makes him one of them. He retreats and explores when he's sad and angry and happy, and every new passage found behind paintings and puzzles is a glad secret that he holds close to his heart.

Ezran has only just turned ten when his father returns from the Breach with something dark and disturbed in his eyes. Harrow still laughs and jokes and finds the time to play games when he can, but something is different. Ezran knows that some great battle was fought, that the King and Prince of the dragons are dead, that the adults are on edge. As always, he escapes from reminders of the endless ebb and flow of conflict by spending more time in the dark and hidden corners of his home, and that's when he feels it.

He doesn't know what it is, at first. It feels like it's something within him, a steady thrum of emotion that grows with every passing week. He has his father and brother close, has Bait, has Claudia and Soren and the guards and servants that he likes the most, and yet he finds himself missing them even when he's with them. He finds himself yearning for his mother, whose face is faded in his memory even though statues and paintings keep her fresh.

He flees deeper into his passages and tunnels to escape the sudden strength of feelings that seem to have come from nowhere, but it isn't until he reaches a supposed dead end, until his feet are drawn there unthinkingly, that he knows. The feelings aren't his. They're coming from somewhere else. Somewhere below. They radiate from the stone under his feet like heat from a stove.

Ezran sits on the ground with Bait held tightly in his lap and tries to understand. It feels like Bait does, he decides, like birds and horses and raccoons do, but... deeper. Where the thoughts of most animals are like the pond in the castle gardens, the thoughts from below are like the ocean. There is no language in them that he can make sense of, but feelings don't need language to be plain.

There's a creature under this tunnel, in a part of the castle that Ezran has not yet discovered, and it's lonely and scared.

* * *

Ezran sets to work, but it takes him a day to figure out that the dead end wall is the key. He examines the floor methodically and even tries to come at the secret area by calculating where other tunnels might intersect, but it's not until he starts examining the walls that he finds protrusions that move when he pushes them.

It takes him a month to solve it. After about a dozen combinations, he starts forgetting which ones he'd tried and has to mark them with numbers and colors and write down his efforts in order to make headway. He has lessons and meals and sleep in the meantime, but the dead end and the mysterious feelings keep drawing him back, day after day. It feels sadder and lonelier, the more time passes, and Ezran finds himself talking to whatever it is as he presses the rocks again and again.

"Did you get stuck down there?" he asks, sitting down cross-legged and marking yet another combination that doesn't work in a sketchbook he borrowed from Callum. Bait warbles beside him, painted the soft, glow-less gray of boredom. The glow toad has no job here, where crystals set into alcoves in the wall glow their own soft blue-green, except to keep a lookout while Ezran concentrates.

Ezran takes a moment to pat Bait's head and grab a bite of a jelly tart from his stash, then gets back up and tries again - a rock here, a stone there, a distinction he's developed between rough and smooth protrusions to make it easier to remember. "Don't worry," he continues. "I'll figure this out. I'm pretty good at puzzles."

The protrusion-studded wall is one of the hardest puzzles he's ever attempted. But the loneliness radiates, strong enough that when Ezran wakes up, he sometimes gets it confused with his own feelings again. He's not giving up.

His hand stops against a stone, smooth and cold beneath his fingers. "I miss my mom too," he ventures, his voice smaller. "I was pretty young when she died. I don't even remember her that well. But... I miss her. She liked to pick me up." The sense of being lifted high into the air, giggling and thrillingly dizzy, is clear and strong in his mind. It makes him feel strange and sick sometimes, like his stomach is closing in on itself and his throat is tightening. But other times, it simply makes him feel safe. "When I find you, I'll help you find your mom, okay?"

The feelings shift, an acknowledgement in them now. A sense of trust.

So Ezran works that much harder, until finally, a month after he started, the stone trembles and the floor opens, sinking down into a circular staircase.

What's below makes his stomach feel heavy, like he ate too much of something not good for him, more and more the longer he looks. There are strange tools and jars full of dead creatures, books with titles in languages he doesn't know and a sense of wrongness in the air, which tingles and smells both stale and electric. It's a workshop, Ezran thinks, and the candelabras on the many shelves are lit and burning. A used workshop. But whose is it?

He'd found the passageway and the supposed dead end behind a painting in Lord Viren's study.

Ezran would never say it out loud, but he likes Viren's children more than than likes the man himself, even though Viren is his father's closest friend. Viren has always been nice to him, if distant, and Ezran would never say that sometimes he's a little wary of the man. He doesn't know why. Now, with Bait clutched tightly in his arms and his eyes roving the workshop, he wonders if this place belongs to Viren. He wonders what the man does here and why it's a secret.

Then he remembers why he's here.

It takes Ezran half a second to find the source of the feelings, which are now so strong that tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. There's a covered pedestal at the other end of the room, and when he puts Bait down and pulls the blanket off, he finds an egg unlike any other underneath.

For a moment, he's mesmerized. The egg is half as big as he is, and all shades of blue glow within, interspersed with splashes of white and pink and other colors. The light pulses like a heartbeat and radiates a welcoming warmth. Ezran lifts a tentative hand and places it against the egg's smooth surface, and thoughts and feelings rise up to greet him from its unfathomable depths, making the tips of his fingers tingle. They come in intricate and unknown language, as well as impressions undefined by such, but Ezran knows that there is life within, a child not unlike him. A child that misses his mother.

He's heard the adults talk about the egg of the Dragon Prince, the one that was destroyed in the war, and Ezran is suddenly afraid.

* * *

The time to make a decision slips by too fast.

Ezran talks to the egg again and promises that he'll find a way to get it home, but he doesn't know how to do that. He visits the workshop and the egg more than once, making sure that he knows the new area thoroughly before he decides how to deal with this. He figures out how to open and close the secret staircase from within the workshop and finds other passages in and out, but when he's back among the regular rooms and passageways of the castle, he says nothing.

Callum doesn't believe that he can understand animals, and his father has been spending a lot of time with Lord Viren lately. Something stops Ezran from bringing up the egg at first, something that makes him shy away from and avoid Viren whenever he can. He doesn't know who the workshop is for and why the egg is there, but something about the situation doesn't feel right, and it freezes him in his tracks.

And then Callum tells him that people are coming to kill their father, and Ezran knows that he has to do something.

He makes his way back down to the workshop as soon as he gets a chance. Little has changed, which tells him that it isn't used often or else is used very carefully, and the egg is still there. The presence within flares in greeting, and Ezran takes a moment to rest his hands on its warm, smooth sides.

"Hello," he says, watching the light swirl within. "Sorry for not getting you out sooner. I've just been confused. But I'm gonna take you to my dad. He'll know what to do." He pauses. His chest tightens. "Some people want to hurt him. I think it's because of the war. But everyone keeps saying that the war started again because you're dead. Or they think you are. If they find out you're alive, maybe things will change."

If the baby dragon within gets back to his mother, he won't be so lonely, and maybe the elves and dragons won't want to kill Ezran's dad anymore. It's the best Ezran can do.

He braces himself to lift the egg, and alarm and warning floods into his head like a shock, so much that he gasps and stumbles back and trips.

Bait lets out an angry croak and hops over to him, warbling at the egg accusingly as he does. Ezran blinks from his new position on the floor. His head is full of thoughts not his own, and he pats Bait's head and gets to his feet, staring at the egg. "You don't want me to go to my dad?" 

Danger, the creature in the egg is saying, not in words but in impressions, feelings. Ezran doesn't think he means King Harrow. It's something close to the King.

Ezran feels sick. "But _he's_ in danger," he says, and he rubs his face with a hand. If he can't go to Dad, then... "Callum," he continues. "My brother can help. Is that okay?"

The egg's presence in his mind hums with the sense of agreement, and Ezran gives it a pat before draping the blanket over it again. He leaves by way of the secret staircase, knowing that Lord Viren won't be in his study, that this way will lead to his and Callum's rooms faster.

Callum will just have to believe him this time.

* * *

Later, deep in the forests of Katolis, Rayla keeps watch, and Callum sleeps, and Ezran pretends to sleep with his arms wrapped around the egg. The ground pokes at him uncomfortably, and the dense, dark trees seem to close in around them, and the loneliness in him is his own this time.

He thinks about his father back in the castle, and his stomach churns. Callum had said that the finest guards in the kingdom would be defending their father, which is true and which makes Ezran feel better. But he still doesn't know how his father is. If he's hurt, if he knows where they are, if he's worried about them. Ezran can't ask him for advice, can't ask him what the egg was doing in the depths of the castle.

He can't shake the idea that his father hasn't been honest with him.

It sits uncomfortably on his chest, and he curls in on it, hugging the egg closer as if its warmth can banish his thoughts. He knows that adults often hide their worries around him, but this is different. Lord Viren had stolen the egg, and it had been in the castle. King Harrow's castle. Had Ezran's father known? Is that what they'd spoken about, when they'd gone off on their own many a time to talk of things too grown-up for Ezran? But if his father hadn't known, what had happened four months ago to the Dragon King, that the adults speak of so grimly? Why had Claudia called the egg a weapon?

The egg in question pulses in Ezran's grip with worry and a sharp, buzzing warmth. The dragon in the egg is happier now, his thoughts turned towards home with hope and eagerness, and some of those sensations flow into Ezran's mind, trying to lighten and ease his feelings. Ezran rubs his thumb against the smooth, glassy surface and stares at the blue-white glow, smiling a little. He doesn't want to speak out loud, doesn't want to draw Rayla's attention, so he wills the dragon to feel his thanks and hopes it works.

It seems to. The dragon's happiness is apparent and bright, and it's hard for Ezran not to feel some of it as if it's his own.

Down near his legs, Bait croaks and scoots closer, and Ezran muffles a giggle at the way the glow toad's disgruntled eyes bore into him. He moves the egg a little, reaches down, and pats Bait's head, then pats the space between him and the egg.

Bait takes it over with a hop, settling down with a grunt and another annoyed look at Ezran and the egg both, and then he changes his mind. He hops up to Ezran's head instead and shoves himself under, and Ezran smiles.

And with Bait as a pillow and the egg's glowing warmth filling his mind, Ezran finds himself able to sleep.

* * *

Ezran has never felt cold like this - the kind that hurts so much that you stop feeling it after a while, in which you learn that sometimes not feeling is scarier than pain.

He floats in the water and doesn't know up from down. There is only the egg to orient him and ground him, and his frozen hands clutch at it like they're meant to, but it's heavy, and the water is dark, and he doesn't know how to get out. He's not going to make it, he thinks. He's numb and exhausted, and his chest is screaming for air. He doesn't know where the hole to the surface is anymore. He's not going to make it. He's not-

The egg pulses. Somehow, it's still warm, and that warmth flows into Ezran, easing the horrible tightness of his chest and sending a tingling rush of feeling and strength into his legs and arms. The egg's light seems to carve a path through the water, and Ezran uses one hand to pull himself in that direction, while the other clutches the egg close. His strokes and kicks carry him slowly, each one painful and labored, but he doesn't run out of air. His legs and arms keep working, until at last, he strikes something solid.

The ice. The surface. The world rights itself, restoring up and down.

The warmth is fading fast, but Ezran lifts his free hand and pounds on the ice, again and again and again, until he sees Rayla's face above him, sees her switchblades striking madly at the ice to get to him. Until he loses all sense of who and where he is, as the ice begins to crack in earnest. But he doesn't lose his grip on the egg. He can't. It needs him.

The next thing he's aware of is Callum sniffing and hugging him, of Rayla draping herself over them with a shaky sigh, of how there is no more warmth to give him strength. His limbs hurt, and he shakes like a leaf in a storm. He leans into Callum's shoulder and tries not to cry.

When he opens his eyes, his gaze automatically locks on the egg. It's resting several meters away on the ice, a small dot of flickering, dimming blue light against the unforgiving white of the frozen lake, and Ezran's heart plummets back into the icy water.

* * *

The dragon's name is Azymondias. He emerges from the egg in a burst of happiness and newfound freedom, and Ezran feels like he can breathe again. He laughs as Zym pounces on Bait and then stumbles up to him on ungainly claws. When he presses his forehead to the dragon's, he tastes the sharpness of storm at the back of his throat and doesn't know where his joy ends and Zym's begins. Zym's thoughts are like wind that knocks you off your feet, and Ezran thinks that it'd be easy to get overwhelmed by them.

Except for Zym's name, there's little else of language that Ezran understands, and the feelings still come to him in impressions, but outside the egg, they are clearer, sharper. Ezran wonders what they'll feel like when Zym is big and strong.

Zym cuddles up to Rayla and pulls the binding off of her wrist, and Ezran remembers that it had been meant for him. His death for the death of the Dragon Prince. But he isn't dead, and neither is Zym, and maybe things will change because of that. It's easy to believe, as they sit in a circle on a mountaintop under the night sky and laugh at Zym's clumsy antics. As orbs of light float down from the heavens, and Bait tries to eat one, and Zym imitates him.

But Ezran knows when adults are worried and trying to hide it, and he sees the way that Lujanne watches the horizon with a furrow between her eyes. He doesn't ask. He leaves that to Callum or Rayla, because Zym is still brimming with the joy of freedom and life, and Ezran wants to sit with that for a little longer. With the last of who he was before all of this started, before assassins had come to kill him, and he'd stolen a dragon egg back. Before he'd left home not knowing what state it would be in when he returned.

Eventually, Zym crawls sleepily into his lap, and the others talk of settling down for the night as well, but Ezran isn't ready for that just yet. He knows that it's silly, that this night is no different from others they've spent on the road, save for the fact that the egg is no longer an egg. But he marks it down in his mind nonetheless, as Zym turns around and around in his lap, trying to get comfortable - a divide between the Ezran of before and the Ezran of tomorrow.

At last, Zym settles, and his head tilts back to blink up at Ezran with luminous blue eyes. Those eyes are soft and happy and trusting, and that's why the divide exists. The egg is no longer an egg, and Ezran had made a promise.

"We'll get you back to your mom," he says quietly, and he runs his fingers through the white plume crowning Zym's head, softer than the castle sheets. His hand moves to Zym's scales, and he feels the same warmth that had emanated from the egg. It tingles with electricity and what Ezran recognizes as magic now. "And we'll make everyone stop fighting."

Zym blinks, and his thoughts hum, steady and content. He agrees.

Bait croaks, and Ezran realizes that the glow toad is sitting in front of him, glowering. He grins and pats the top of Zym's back, and Zym's head swivels around to look at Bait. After a moment, Bait leaps up and latches on to Zym's back. Zym turns his head as far around as he can to watch, and as soon as Bait is settled, Zym's tongue darts out, hitting Bait directly in the eye.

The glow toad jumps straight up with an indignant croak and lands again, glaring at the dragon. Ezran tries to suppress a giggle and shakes so much that Bait shifts the focus of his glare. Satisfied, Zym curls up with his head against Ezran's stomach, asleep in seconds, and it doesn't take long for Bait to follow suit.

Ezran can feel himself drifting in the same direction, his eyes as heavy as the weight of the once-egg in his arms. But he sits for a while, unwilling to disturb the animals in his lap, and listens as Lujanne promises to watch over them tonight, as Callum and Rayla's good-natured ribbing and Ellis's matter-of-fact interjections give way to sleepy silence, as the low and steady mountain wind whistles all around them.

* * *

War does not end in a day, or a month, or a year. Peace is not the banner that unites Xadia and the human kingdoms. It is the chisel that fractures them, hammered by the revelation of past and present lies and revisionist history, by the steadfast unity between the Princes of Katolis, the Prince of the dragons, and a child of the Moon that refuses to bend to the will of ancient grudges.

As sentiments towards peace stir on both sides of the Breach, hot-blooded factions boiling with resentment and opportunism rise up in answer, fracturing the so-called halves of the continent. The map of the world becomes a mosaic of jagged pieces, no longer split only down the middle.

Slowly and inexorably, however, peace advances, carried on the wings of the Dragon Prince and his friends. Ezran grows, not as fast as Zym and never as tall as Callum, and he learns that it is imperative to offer communication and understanding and friendship first, to extend compassion and the benefit of the doubt as much as is safe and reasonable, to lift a hand in welcome before ever lifting a sword. He learns how to do so with diplomacy, how to tell when someone is genuine and when someone wants to take advantage of his good heart.

He learns how to do so far too young, but someone has to.

Through it all, there's a usurper on the throne of Katolis, legitimized by dark magic, by the treasonous alliance between the Princes of Katolis and the realm of magic. There is something dark and festering, evil and hungry in the once-great kingdom, an inky blot spreading like disease on a stitched-together map, and if it isn't stopped, their fragile peace will unravel faster than it had come together.

Ezran has learned that it is imperative to offer communication and understanding and friendship first, to extend compassion and the benefit of the doubt as much as is safe and reasonable, to lift a hand in welcome before ever lifting a sword.

But sometimes, it is necessary to fight.

When the rivers of lava dry up and Ezran lands within the borders of Katolis, it is the circular end of a journey that has taken him to the regions of Xadia and the other four human kingdoms, to every corner of the continent and beyond. He returns to a home that has expended every effort to keep him out, where some see him as a traitor to his bloodline, to humanity. The Dragon Prince, they say, is both the heir to the dragons and the Prince who rides upon his back, who chose his father's murderers over his kingdom.

But to others, he is the boy king of Katolis, come to claim his throne and liberate them at long last.

Behind him is the equally traitorous Standing Battalion of Katolis led by Aunt Amaya, his Regent, and half the strength of the other human kingdoms, and the might of the elves and the dragons too, united as one. Behind him is Callum and Rayla, Ellis and Ava, and all those who'd joined them along the way. An army to get them where they need to go, to the black heart of Katolis and the evil both ancient and new that started it all.

When Azymondias settles low, the ground trembles. The vibration runs up Ezran's spine and stirs his hair, and at Ezran's feet, Bait croaks, disgruntled at the way the grass tries to displace him. Though Ezran's eyes never leave the wooded countryside sprawled before the hill on which they stand, he lifts a hand and places it against the diamond-hard scales of Zym's head. The warmth underneath his fingers feels good in the chill of early morning, and there's a familiar acrid taste on his tongue.

Zym hovers close, and the proximity of his now-massive bulk never frightens Ezran. Zym knows gentleness more than he knows otherwise, and the coils of his body are safe and protective. He cocoons them in a courtyard made of towering scales and sinewy curves, and the sounds of the army fade. Only the sky above rumbles, the hint of a coming storm. For a few moments, Ezran can pretend that they are on a kinder journey.

But his eyes trace the mountains on the horizon, purple-hued outlines against a pale orange sky turning gray. Nestled close to those is a place that he hasn't seen in a long time.

 _Don't look so gloomy,_ Zym says. _We'll win._

Ezran tilts his head up to give Zym a sideways glance. It's a little hard to do when even one of Zym's eyes is now bigger than he is, but Ezran is an old hand. _I'm not gloomy._

Zym's eye blinks at him, deliberate and unconvinced. But there's a nonnative sense of melancholy in Ezran's mind, a concern that wraps itself around his thoughts like the arms of an embrace - a tide that could overwhelm, that never does. Ezran lets it in with a sigh.

 _You brought me home,_ Zym says. _I told you I'd return the favor. I will._

Ezran smiles, small and grateful. He leans down to scoop up Bait, who croaks again, softer this time. Holding the glow toad close, Ezran turns away from the horizon and leans his forehead against the glimmering blue-white scales, and Zym shifts, a minute, careful movement that brings him closer and coils him tighter around Ezran.

Ezran closes his eyes and lets the electric thrum of warmth and magic beneath Zym's scales calm his pounding heart.  _I know._

**Author's Note:**

> I also think that Harrow is in the bird and refuse to believe that he's dead, but in the absence of confirmation, you can read the last section as face value interpretation or just that he's been in Katolis the whole time.


End file.
